Midnight Honor

to whistle into their midst and they turned like a school of scarlet fish and began running back along the road.
    “Fall back!” Blakeney shouted. “Fire at will, and for God's sake, do not let them outflank us!”
    “Fall back!” Jamie screamed. “Fall back! Run, ye bastards! Run all the way back tae Inverness!”
    The barrage continued, an army of phantom clansmen created out of the frenzied screams of a dozen brazen men. Their efforts were spurred on by the lunatic Farquharsontwins from Monaltrie, who chased after the stampeding Englishmen until they had expended all their shot, emptied all their weapons. It had been an insane idea concocted out of desperation, and they were under no illusions the ruse would work farther than the first bend in the road. There the colonel and his men would draw up, realize there was no army in pursuit, and turn back with a vengeance, but at the least it might have bought Anne the time she needed to spirit the prince away to safety.
    Robbie stood in the middle of the road, swaying on his feet. Jamie was beside him, peeling off the scarlet tunic he had taken from the forward scout the smithy, Colin Fraser, had startled in the bushes. The unfortunate corporal and the soldier who had been throat-shot were the only two casualties until Jamie hauled back and punched his brother hard enough on the jaw to send him sprawling.
    “That could ha' been me ye shot, ye bluidy daft beggar!” Robbie didn't care. He stayed on his knees, where his twin joined him a moment later for an apologetic bear hug, both of them praying to whatever gods were left to watch over them when the English came back.
    When Anne rode up the road fifteen minutes later, her cousins were still huddled on the road with the other men, only they were not praying. They were laughing.
    “Gone? What do you mean gone?”
    “I swear it, Annie,” Jamie said, gasping for breath. “One o' the lads followed and said they didna stop runnin' until they were back on the main road. The stupid bastards just turned an' ran! We fired our guns, shouted a few names, an' they ran like the sin-eaters were after them.”
    Anne stared down the road. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. The moon was just starting to crest over the distant mountain peaks, painting the topmost branches of the trees silver, giving texture and substance to the shadows below. The faintly acrid tang of exploded powder hung suspended in the mist—mist that thickened with her own disbelieving breaths.
    “I cannot imagine they would have just
gone,”
she said, and no sooner were the ominous words out of her mouth thanthe muted rumble of approaching hoofbeats sent her swinging sharply around in her saddle. They were not coming from the direction of the Inverness road, but from the moor!
    “They have circled around,” she gasped. “They have come up behind us!”
    Robbie ordered the men to scatter into the bushes, fearing what was most probable: that Blakeney had split his force in half and these were the reinforcements.
    “We've no more powder or shot,” Jamie said. “If it's the English, we're done for. Come along, Annie. We'd best get intae the woods, out o' sight.”
    His prompt came a moment too late. Anne had barely kicked her foot out of the stirrup when the darkness exploded with horses and men. They came from all sides, the road, the trees, easily five score or more, all bristling with muskets, driving the small band of erstwhile defenders out of the bushes in front of them.
    But Anne's men were not cringing in fear, they were dancing with joy, and it took a further jolt of astonishment for her to recognize the tarnished brass locks of John MacGillivray as he reined his beast to a rearing halt beside her.
    “We heard shootin',” he said. “We saw the lobsterbacks runnin' down the road an' thought mayhap we'd missed the fight. Did Lord George make it back, then?”
    She could barely do more than gape at him, at his men for seeming to have appeared out of nowhere. “No,” she managed. “No, it's just us and now you.”
    “The prince?”
    Anne's relief had barely begun to register when she remembered Douglas Forbes's warning about the young English soldier who had volunteered to escort Charles Stuart up into the hills. Conveying this new crisis to MacGillivray with a minimum of words, she turned The Bruce around and urged the gelding into a full gallop back to Moy Hall. No sooner had they streaked across the glen and organized armed